by Lucy Score
And then today, she’d packed her things, retrieved her small stash of cash she’d hidden behind the trailer’s broken skirting, and left the bastard.
“It’s over,” Gloria returned numbly.
All business, Dr. Dunnigan checked her pulse, the dilation of her pupils. She pulled out her stethoscope, cool green eyes skimming what Gloria knew was a necklace of bruises forming around her throat.
The door flew open and bounced off the wall, temporarily obscuring the basket of puppies. Sara Parker, still in her hair-stylist apron, burst into the room. For a woman never prone to dramatics, it was quite the entrance.
“Oh, God. Gloria. Mija!” Gloria didn’t want to see the pity in her mother’s eyes. Didn’t want to acknowledge that her pain hurt her mother as viciously as if it were her own. “When I got that phone call, I thought he’d killed you.”
The words broke down the walls of her shock, and hot tears spilled over onto her cold, pale cheeks. “I’m sorry,” Gloria whispered as the thin, strong bands of her mother’s arms welcomed her.
“My sweet girl. Are you done? Is this the end?” Sara asked.
She nodded. “It’s over. He’s in jail.”
“Good.” Sara swore colorfully in Spanish and then promptly closed the book on her anger. “You’ll stay with me. I’ll make chicken noodle soup.”
“My bags are already at your house,” Gloria confessed with a ghost of a smile. Even after all these years of estrangement, Gloria had known she could go home. With Glenn gone, her mother would be safe.
“Mm-hmm,” Dr. Dunnigan harrumphed. “Now, if you don’t mind, Mrs. Parker, I’d like to continue examining my patient.”
Sara cupped Gloria’s face in her hands. “Welcome home, mjia. I’ll wait for you outside.”
“Thank you, Mama.”
A little of the cold in her soul faded. The sliver of fear dulled just a bit.
“Ooof,” the doctor tut-tutted when she looked at Gloria’s side where the gravel had abraded her skin. “It hurts now. But you’ll heal,” she predicted.
Gloria hoped the woman meant inside and out. Because right now, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever feel normal again. Hell, she didn’t even remember what normal was. What did her future look like? A girl who had barely graduated high school, never worked, and handed over any sense of self-respect to a monster. What kind of a place was there for her in this world?
In silence she bore the humiliation of the exam, so familiar, somehow again dehumanizing—being reduced to injuries that she wished she’d been strong enough to prevent.
Dr. Dunnigan’s fingers clicked away officially on her laptop, updating her records. “Pictures,” she said, peering over her reading glasses. She had always refused the doctor’s offer to document her injuries before. She’d never told Dr. Dunnigan that she had her own documentation, hidden away. Every bruise, every sprain, every broken bone. There had been days when she thought she’d never use it, never leave.
But she had.
“What am I going to do?” Her voice was hoarse as much from emotion as Glenn’s brutish hands.
“You’re not going to worry about making decisions today and for a while,” Dr. Dunnigan said briskly. She shut her laptop and opened a drawer to pull out a small digital camera. “You made the hardest decision today. Now it’s time to heal, rest, remember who you are without him.”
Was she anyone without him? Was poor little Gloria Parker anybody without the stigma of abuse? Did she even exist in this world anymore?
“I feel like a ghost,” she confessed softly.
Dr. Dunnigan helped her to her feet. “Feel real enough to me. Give yourself some time to heal, kiddo. Inside takes a lot longer than outside.”
Gloria lifted her chin so the doctor could record the garish handprints around her neck and closed her eyes when the motion made her dizzy.
The camera shutter clicked quietly.
“Today you’re not a victim. Today you’re a survivor.”
3
He felt his legs warm as the pavement blurred beneath his feet. His muscles hummed as he pushed harder. Benevolence, Maryland, his town since birth, clipped past as he outran his demons. Cozy houses sat on pretty green lawns that butted up against tree-lined streets.
It was April, and the rain that had plagued them for a week straight had abated, giving way to one perfect day of sunshine and eighty-degree weather. Aldo Moretta had ducked out of the office an hour early to take advantage of it with a run.
He raised a hand to the hugely pregnant Carol Ann who sat in her driveway in a lawn chair while her husband, Carl, a stick figure of a man, weeded the front flower bed. Carol Ann wiggled her fingers at him.
There were a lot of things Aldo couldn’t control. Which is why he took very good care of the things he could. Like his body. He’d fine-tuned himself into an athletic machine with a six-minute mile and a three-hundred-and-fifteen-pound overhead squat. He made himself strong and quick and ready. In four weeks’ time, he’d be calling on it all. His National Guard unit was deploying—his fourth time.
He turned the corner and fished the biscuit out of his pocket at the excited yaps coming from behind Peggy Sue Marsico’s three-foot-tall picket fence. Smiegel the Beagle wagged his white-tipped tail in a blur. He tossed the treat and watched Smiegel catch it mid-air in a super-dog, ears-out dive. He grinned as the dog pranced proudly through the ferns, prize between his teeth.
Next door to Peggy Sue’s beige and blue ranch was Lincoln Reed’s place. Once an old gas station, the fire chief had transformed it into a killer bachelor pad. Linc made it his mission in life to bachelor the hell out of every eligible woman in the tri-county area. He was a charming, friendly commitment-phobe.
Linc was a blast to hang out with. It was too bad that he and Aldo’s best friend, Luke, could barely tolerate the sight of each other.
“What’s up, Moretta?” Linc called out, raising a beer while spraying down his truck with the hose. “Want a beer?”
“Maybe after a few more miles,” Aldo called back.
“Swing back,” Linc said, turning the hose on a grateful Aldo before switching back to the gleaming pickup.
With a wave, He was off again. He tuned into his footfalls as he skirted the cemetery. He didn’t look at the grave. Didn’t have to. Every time he passed this stretch of gently rolling green dotted with white headstones, he remembered.
The years that separated him from the moment he found Luke curled around his wife’s headstone, an empty six-pack next to him, disappeared. He’d held his friend while sobs racked the man’s body as the grief he’d bottled burst through his cracks. They never spoke of that moment. They didn’t have to. They were brothers without the blood. They’d traded life saves back and forth like kids traded baseball cards or Pokémon shit.
“Hey there, handsome!” Valerie Washington was seventy-three years old, looked like she was fifty, and acted like she was eighteen. She waved a margarita glass from her front porch where she was perched with a stack of romance novels and biographies, her fresh haul from the library.
“When are you going to divorce Mr. Washington and marry me?” Aldo demanded, jogging in place and flexing for her.
She slid her oversized prescription sunglasses down her nose and gave him a wink.
“When he stops being excellent in bed,” she shot back.
Aldo blew her a kiss and pressed on, finally winding his way onto the lake trail. Benevolence was slowly waking up to spring. Green buds sprouted in the canopy above him while his feet raced over last year’s leaves. Beginnings and endings.
And just like that, his thoughts turned to Gloria Parker. It had been a week since everything changed. A week of torture. Wanting something so badly. Knowing that he couldn’t have it, try for it. Not yet. He’d left town last weekend under the guise of a fishing trip so he wouldn’t show up on her mother’s front porch begging to see Her. Instead, he’d paced a cabin in West Virginia for forty-eight hours straight and ran himself into
the ground on the mountain trails until he was too exhausted to even think about inserting himself into her life.
No. She needed time. Time to herself, to heal. He’d be patient. Just as he’d been since high school. Besides, Glenn could slide right through again. Could end up winning her back again. If that happened, Aldo knew he wouldn’t be able to stay out of it.
He felt the afternoon sun on his face, the sweat as it rolled down his back and, for the first time in a long time, felt hopeful about being patient.
“You keep runnin’ like that, you’ll puke.” Deputy Ty Adler, the man who had the distinct pleasure of placing Glenn Diller under arrest, joined him at the Y in the trail. He was wearing a Benevolence PD ball cap and a Not-So-Polar Plunge t-shirt.
“How’s it going, deputy?”
“Just fine. Just fine,” Ty drawled.
Ty had moved to Benevolence in high school, laid eyes on teenage Sophie Garrison, and fallen flat on his face in love. It had taken him a couple of years to drag a commitment out of her, but they were happy, their little family of three.
Aldo was ready for his own happy.
“Heard you had some excitement last week,” Aldo pressed, slowing his pace a touch to conversational speed.
Ty was in good shape, just not quite Moretta good shape.
“Finally got to put that asshole behind bars,” Ty said cheerfully. “Must have been good news to you.” Aldo didn’t have to see beneath his friend’s sunglasses to know the man was looking at him.
“About damn time.”
“Seems I recall you and Diller going head to head a time or two right after high school,” Ty mused. Folks in Benevolence called it fishing.
Aldo’s hands closed into fists at the memory. “We were just kids then,” he answered vaguely.
“And I seem to recall you getting piss-faced drunk after one shoving match,” Ty reminded him.
“Nothing wrong with your memory,” Aldo quipped, picking up the pace. He hid a grin as Ty’s wheezing instantly increased while he fought to keep up.
“Come on, man. Don’t turn on the afterburners.”
“Give me one good reason.”
“He’s not gettin’ out.”
Aldo stopped, and Ty smacked right into him. “Jesus, how do you do this without water?” Ty gasped, twisting open the mangled water bottle he carried. He guzzled deeply and handed it over to Aldo.
Aldo drank and waited for Ty to get to the fucking point.
“Anyway, as I was saying. Diller’s not sliding on this. He attacked another woman, and she’s fired up enough to press charges. Doc’s testifying. Our boy Luke’s a witness.”
Aldo swallowed hard and forced his fingers to relax on the bottle.
“Gloria’s charging him, too,” Ty continued. “Turns out she’s got photos of every beating for the past few years.”
The water bottle didn’t stand a chance. Water gushed over his fingers, cramped in a death grip on the plastic. Every beating for the past few years…
Where the fuck had he been? Why hadn’t he stopped it?
“Aw, man. No need to be wasteful,” thirsty Ty mourned.
“How is she?” Aldo asked, his voice ragged.
Ty clapped a hand on his shoulder. They’d never talked about Aldo’s feelings for Gloria. Hell, no one really knew there were any feelings. But Ty was sharper than his southern drawl let on. “She’s good. Real good. Stopped in to see her yesterday. Glenn won’t make bail. His mama’s got nothing to put up for him, and the judge wasn’t feeling very friendly towards him on account of him calling her a stupid bitch at his arraignment. So unless he can cough up $200,000, he’s gonna rot in a cell until his trial.”
“Fucker,” Aldo swore quietly.
“Gloria’s good, though. This time is different,” Ty predicted.
Aldo hoped to all that was fucking good and right in this world that his friend was correct. Neither he nor Gloria could survive another round.
Aldo jogged up the stone steps to the front porch of his Craftsman bungalow and pulled open the screen door. Sweaty, thirsty, and now more hopeful than he had been, he loped down the hallway to the kitchen in the back. He filled a glass straight from the tap, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and returned to the porch. Dropping down onto a chair that wouldn’t disintegrate under his sweat, he propped his feet up on the railing.
He thought of Luke and the rumors that his recluse of an almost-brother was shacking up with a stranger. The stranger who played a role in taking down Gloria’s abusive asshole. He needed to touch base, catch up. Find out if Luke had suffered a head trauma and invited a psychotic woman into his home. Or if some miracle had occurred and his friend was finally loosening his grip on grief.
He had let his own life shit take the lead this week. It was time to check back in.
The neighborhood noise buzzed quietly around him. Pauletta’s lawnmower coughing to life. Roberta Shawn’s kids begging for popsicles.
He’d bought the house two years ago and, unlike his frozen-in-time friend Luke, had immediately started renovating. He had tweaked and painted and reconfigured until the four-bedroom house was ready. He believed. Aldo Moretta was putting it out there to the universe. He believed.
He was ready for the rest of his life to begin. He wanted the wife, the family, the backyard barbecues. He wanted neighbor kids playing capture the flag in his backyard. And he wanted every last one of those things with Gloria Parker.
4
“Mama, I’m going…out.” Gloria called, studying herself in the reflection of the mirror propped against the wall in her childhood bedroom. The walls were still the same aqua that she’d enthusiastically slathered all over the room for her fourteenth birthday. Her bold fuchsia and raspberry accessories were still scattered about. Echoes of a different girl. Brave, vibrant, goofy, unbelievably naïve.
She didn’t recognize any traces of that girl inside or out as she adjusted the cheery floral scarf around her neck. It added a little something to her plain t-shirt and jeans while camouflaging the gruesome bruises that had faded to a lovely jaundice color around her neck. “I shouldn’t be gone longer than an hour.”
Her mother, slim and sad, appeared in her open doorway.
“You know you don’t have to report to me,” Sara reminded her.
She dropped her gaze to the pink toenails on display in her flip-flops. Her mother had treated her to a pedicure—and a cell phone—as soon as she was well enough to leave the house. Gloria had spent the entire time shoving away the feelings of guilt and fear that swept over her.
“I know,” she said sadly. “It’s going to take some time.”
Her mother came up behind her, slipping an affectionate arm around her waist. Sara had the beautiful coloring and luxurious dark hair of her Mexican mama. Today, Sara looked younger than her own daughter.
“No one is going to push you to do anything you’re not ready to.”
“I know, Mama.” She did know. But knowing it and feeling it were two different things. Part of her felt like she was still trapped in that dingy trailer with the man who’d turned monster.
“Good,” Sara approved. “I’ll continue to remind you until you don’t need reminding.”
She gave her mother a small smile. When the situation called for it, Sara could be tenacious, pushy even. “Let’s promise to be honest with each other,” she begged. Gloria didn’t want things sugar coated for her protection. She didn’t want to be the weak one anymore. She could face the truth and probably survive it.
“Okay.” Sara nodded. “I’ll go first. You’re too skinny. Too tired. You need good food and rest and time. Ten years isn’t going to be easy to overcome. But now that I have you back, I’m never letting go. Not even if you try to slip away again. I will fight for you this time.”
For a second, Gloria saw the whole mess through her mother’s eyes. The alienation. The distance. The pain of watching her only child lose herself to a man who was incapable of taking care. A daughter too weak to
stand up for herself, Gloria thought wryly. “I’m so sorry, Mama.”
“For what, love?”
“For hurting you. For disappointing you.”
Her mother tsked. “You know what I see there?” she asked, studying their reflection.
“What?”
“Two very beautiful women who are going to have a very good life.”
Gloria felt her lips quirk at the corners. “I hope you’re right.”
Sara turned Gloria to face her. “Have faith, mija. You’re here now. That’s a start.”
Gloria felt the burn of tears. “Thank you for taking me back, Mama.” This was her second chance. She wasn’t going to need a third.
Sara rolled her eyes at the thanks that wasn’t necessary. “Go do your thing. Then come back. We’ll drink wine, and I’ll make salsa.”
It was a real smile now. “I’ll pick up the tortilla chips,” she promised.
Gloria straightened her shoulders and reached up to adjust the scarf again. She was more nervous standing here in the street, staring at the rambling three-story brick home, than she had been at Remo’s the night she left Glenn.
“Shit,” she muttered, losing her gumption and hurrying down the sidewalk. She’d take a stroll around the block, talk herself into it.
“Get it together, Gloria,” she told herself as her feet carefully avoided each sidewalk crack. “She’s not going to break your arm or strangle you.” Morbid pep talk out of the way, She rounded the block and took slow, deep breaths. By the time she found herself in front of the house again, she felt calmer…or at least slightly less crazy.
The woman was there on the porch, sweeping a winter’s worth of debris off the wide planks. Harper Wilde, Deputy Adler—Ty, as he’d insisted—had told her. Harper, the stranger who had stepped in and saved her life in that parking lot, was now living with the reclusive Luke Garrison. There was a story there, but Gloria wasn’t sure if she could ask for it.
She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry to bother you, but Ty told me where I could find you,” Gloria called.